Fire and Fuels

Impacts of Fire Disturbance on Anthropogenically- Induced Vegetation Mosaics

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This is a guest post from Derek Weidensee

If Derek Weidensee were writing for academic journals, he would probably title these photos the above. But he calls them “clearcuts don’t burn.”

Look at photo-39. It’s my attempt at objective reporting. It’s a clearcut that burned. You can see the burned part to the left of the green island. Of course, in 85% of the cases the fire stopped at the edge-stark contrast like-but where it did burn into the regen it soon dropped to the ground and piddled out.

(photo 39 is below)

From Derek:

I’ve spent the last four years photographing the phenomenon on 8 Montana wildfires. The “green islands” are regenerated clearcuts 20-40 years old. They are all of the 2008 Rat Creek fire and the 2000 Mussingbrod fire both west of Wisdom Montana.

If you’re into “google earth”, you can see the location and also another “striking visual” of the Phenomenon by typing the following latitude and Longitude into the “fly too” box. “45 44 56.65N, 113 44 10.71W”. Also try 45 41 34.44N, 113 45 13.15W.

I think you’ll find them interesting. In light of the MPB epidemic, I think it goes a long ways towards answering the question “does salvage logging mitigate fire hazard”. I’m certainly not saying you need to clearcut it all, but there is research that shows “strategically placed” salvage clearcuts on 20-30% of the project area can limit the spread of the fire.

The following is a link to all the research I’ve found regarding the clearcuts don’t burn phenomenon.
http://westinstenv.org/sosf/2010/05/14/clearcuts-dont-burn/

If anyone would like to see more photos of the phenomenon, here are two links- they are posted in Google documents. Clearcuts don’t burn I and Clearcuts don’t burn II.

Treatment Photos from Foto

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This is a guest post from Foto.

While doing scenic photography in SW Utah, I ran across this finished fuels reduction project. It looks like they either used a helicopter, or removed fuels over the snow. The first picture shows what the original condition was like, on the left side of the picture. There are vast areas of snag forests, but on other aspects (south, west and east), the aspen seem to be surviving within “the dead zone”. The second picture shows a close-up of the finished project, with very little erosion, scattered logs on the ground, and a better chance for the spruce survivors to thrive.

In taking a closer look at the treated stand, there is a lot more unmerchantable material on the ground than you think. I know as much about this project as any of you, so I’ll try a critique “on the fly”.

In the wider shot, you can see the landing close to the center of the picture. The size of the landing idicates that this wasn’t a helicopter unit, as those landings are always bigger. Looking at the zoomed-in shot, no skid trails are visible, so I’m guessing that the work was done over the snow. There is absolutely no hint of erosion in the entire unit. It doesn’t appear that green trees were thinned, and there seems to not be enough larger snags still standing, compared to the untreated stand. There are no structures close by, and the project seems to be more of a visual improvement with a lessening of fuels. It is hard to say just how many of those snags were merchantable.

All of the forests in the area are full of snags. With these stands being so dry, the fear seems to be based on losing the entire forest. Notice the ample ladder fuels on the green spruces. Overall, the stand looks like it will recover faster than simply “letting nature take its course”. Many of the other stands have a significant aspen component, with some of those aspens dead and dying from drought and conifer overcrowding.

I’d welcome additional commentary, including artistic critique of the aspen shot (taken at a Forest Service fire station, closed for the season). As I was driving back from Bryce Canyon, I told myself that I wouldn’t stop to shoot more aspens (I had already stopped during the morning drive to capture some shots.) Those golden aspens were simply to beautiful to pass on by.

(Note from SF- since I was technically incapable of reducing the size of these photos, you can click on them and they will show finer scale information). >

Station Fire in LA Times

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Forest Service firefighters try to keep flames from jumping Angeles Crest Highway on the critical second day of the Station fire. They did not succeed, and the six-week blaze became the largest in Los Angeles County history, scorching 250 square miles and destroying more than 200 structures. (Al Seib, Los Angeles Times / August 26, 2009)

Here’s the article.
Working in fire suppression seems like a hopeless “darned if you do darned if you don’t” in an atmosphere of intense political pressure (to save money AND put out fires), knowing there’ll be a later maelstrom of finger-pointing and Monday morning quarterbacking, with some threats of personal liability thrown in for good measure. Don’t know how they put up with it, but I’m glad they do.
Thank you, firefighters!

The Community, Fuel Treatment and Industry Nexus in Colorado

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Photo by Matt Stensland

I thought it was interesting that while we were discussing the 78 acres of WUI fuel treatments in roadless on the Umpqua, the Denver Post published this article this morning.

In addition, regional foresters are planning to remove dead trees from another 33,224 acres the next year, he said.

One challenge facing contractors is getting rid of the cut trees. Timber mills in Montrose and the San Luis Valley and a pellet factory in Kremmling have been hard-pressed to pay loggers enough to make that tree-removal work profitable.

Forest Service contracting officials say they pay around $1,200 per acre for selective removal of dead trees.

As firefighters on Wednesday worked to shore up lines around the wildfire west of Fraser, Town Manager Jeff Durbin said he and other local leaders are looking to meet with Forest Service officials.

Federal land managers haven’t removed enough of the beetle-kill trees that pose threats, Durbin said.

“Wildfire mitigation is really important business,” and this week’s fire heightened concerns about intense fires spreading from federal land, he said.

“You could see, from town, the flames. It was frightening.”

Interaction of Fire Exclusion and Logging- UM Paper

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Thanks to Matthew Koehler for this find.

UM Study Finds Logged Forests More Prone To Severe Wildfires
Oct. 04, 2010

UM Press Release: http://news.umt.edu/2010/10/100110fire.aspx

Copy of Ecological Applications article: http://rintintin.colorado.edu/~cana4848/papers/Naficy_et_al_2010_Ecol_App.pdf

Contact:
Anna Sala, professor, UM Division of Biological Sciences, 406-243-6009, [email protected] .

MISSOULA – Historically logged forest sites are denser and potentially more prone to severe wildfires and insect outbreaks than unlogged, fire-excluded forests and should be considered a high priority for fuel-reduction treatments, according to a new University of Montana study.

Anna Sala and Cameron Naficy, the lead researchers in the study, published an article on these findings in the most recent issue of the journal Ecological Applications. Sala is a professor in UM’s Division of Biological Sciences, and Naficy graduated with a master’s degree from UM in 2008.

Sala and Naficy’s study compared logged, fire-excluded sites to unlogged, fire-excluded sites in forests mainly consisting of ponderosa pines. The study covered a broad region spanning the Continental Divide of the Northern Rockies, from central Montana to central Idaho.

The findings contradict much of the conventional wisdom defining current U.S. forest policy, which assumes that increases in forest density, which in turn increase the susceptibility to severe wildfires or insect outbreaks, are primarily caused by fire suppression.

“This is an important finding because it highlights that vegetation management can result in long-lasting changes to forests that are likely to affect how large-scale disturbances, such as wildfires or insect outbreaks, play out on the landscape well into the future,” Naficy said.

“Furthermore, it shows that previously harvested and unharvested forests have very different restoration needs and fire hazard potential,” Sala said. “This recognition should go a long way in helping land managers to prioritize restoration and fuel-reduction efforts where they are most likely to be successful.”

For more information, call Sala at 406-243-6009, e-mail [email protected] or e-mail Naficy at [email protected] .

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Naficy, Cameron, Anna Sala, Eric G. Keeling, Jon Graham, and Thomas H. DeLuca. 2010. Interactive effects of historical logging and fire exclusion on ponderosa pine forest structure in the northern Rockies. Ecological Applications 20:1851-1864. [doi:10.1890/09-0217.1]

Increased forest density resulting from decades of fire exclusion is often perceived as the leading cause of historically aberrant, severe, contemporary wildfires and insect outbreaks documented in some fire-prone forests of the western United States. Based on this notion, current U.S. forest policy directs managers to reduce stand density and restore historical conditions in fire-excluded forests to help minimize high-severity disturbances. Historical logging, however, has also caused widespread change in forest vegetation conditions, but its long-term effects on vegetation structure and composition have never been adequately quantified. We document that fire-excluded ponderosa pine forests of the northern Rocky Mountains logged prior to 1960 have much higher average stand density, greater homogeneity of stand structure, more standing dead trees and increased abundance of fire-intolerant trees than paired fire-excluded, unlogged counterparts. Notably, the magnitude of the interactive effect of fire exclusion and historical logging substantially exceeds the effects of fire exclusion alone. These differences suggest that historically logged sites are more prone to severe wildfires and insect outbreaks than unlogged, fire-excluded forests and should be considered a high priority for fuels reduction treatments. Furthermore, we propose that ponderosa pine forests with these distinct management histories likely require distinct restoration approaches. We also highlight potential long-term risks of mechanical stand manipulation in unlogged forests and emphasize the need for a long-term view of fuels management.

The Roaded Roadless Paradox

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This post is not really about the multifaceted and fascinating roadless controversies; it’s about clarity of communication in the press-where citizens should become informed on public policy issues.

Suppose you read this piece, “Forest Service cuts back logging in Oregon roadless area on fire safety project”

Here’s a quote:

The project scaled back commercial logging from 621 acres within roadless areas to 78 acres. It is all along a road on the western side of Diamond Lake that serves 102 private cabins on federal land, Dils said. Without the logging there is nowhere for firefighters to make a stand against a fire moving out of the roadless area toward the cabins, Dils said.

“When they designed this plan it really looked like they wanted to test the limits of the Obama administration on roadless,” said Steve Pedery, conservation director for Oregon Wild. “And from our cursory look the new plan looks like it scaled that way, way back, but it seems they still can’t resist pushing the envelope a little bit.”

People who take the English language literally might wonder how cutting trees along a road would impact “roadless” values.

I italicized the sentence about the fuelbreak for firefighters because that is a very clear statement of the objectives of fuel treatment in a WUI area, whether the trees are dead or alive.

Here’s another quote:

The two-year-old project was widely seen as a test of President Barack Obama’s campaign promise to protect the 58 million acres of backcountry that has never been commercially logged on national forests across the country.

But how can an area next to a road be considered “backcountry”? I am mystified as to why this apparent paradox does not seem to be addressed in this article.

Bark Beetle, Hazard Trees and Fuels- The Controversy That Isn’t?

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It seems like everyone agrees that there are many dead trees out here in the Interior West. It seems like most folks think the ones along roads and trails should be cut so they don’t fall on people (although there are more out there than we are probably capable of getting) . Most folks agree that fire breaks around communities are a good idea to give firefighters a safe place to operate, among other reasons. Many people don’t want cutting in the backcountry, but I don’t think that anyone is proposing that.

Firebreaks around communities, roads and powerlines is about all people can get funding to do, if that. If climate change causes more outbreaks and more fires, we will be lucky just to keep up with powerlines, roads and communities.

See the below article here..

Udall, Bennet want Vilsack to treat beetle kill as ‘national emergency’ in wake of wildfires By David O. Williams 10/4/10 2:28 PM
Citing last month’s wildfires near Boulder and Loveland and the ongoing Church’s Park Fire in Grand County, U.S. Sens. Mark Udall and Michael Bennet are asking U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack to treat the pine bark beetle epidemic as a national emergency.

The two Colorado Democrats in a release today said they are leading a bipartisan effort to get Vilsack to “rededicate” an additional $49 million in existing funds to help clear dead trees and perform other forest mitigation work to decrease the fire risk in the U.S. Forest Service Region 2, which includes Colorado, Wyoming, South Dakota, Kansas and Nebraska.

Last year Bennet and Udall got Vilsack to channel $40 million in existing funds into mitigation efforts in Region 2, of which $30 million is now being used to reduce fuel loads in Colorado’s White River, Medicine Bow/Routt and Arapaho/Roosevelt national forests.

In the wake of the costly Fourmile Canyon blaze west of Boulder last month, which consumed 166 homes, environmentalists and politicians – including Boulder’s mayor – pointed to climate change as a key contributor in the ongoing bark beetle epidemic that has killed more than 2 million acres of lodgepole pines in Colorado and Wyoming.

Scientists generally agree that warmer historical temperatures have contributed to the outbreak because there have not been enough prolonged cold snaps to kill beetle larvae during the winter months. But some studies suggest forests are not any more susceptible to wildfire because of the beetle kill outbreak and that resources for clearing trees too deep into the forest should be limited.

Still, firefighters generally agree that the huge fuel loads presented by massive swaths of dead forest make battling blazes in and around communities all the more problematic, and one of the greatest concerns is clearing dead trees away from the state’s hundreds of miles of power lines that criss-cross public lands.

I also thought this article was interesting and well written. Beetle-kill epidemic a boon for Wyoming’s timber industry?

Here’s some more quotes related to the “controversy.”

Beetle-killed forests are just as susceptible to fire as green forests, and there’s little proof of the widely held fear that fires in infested stands will burn so hot they’ll sterilize the soil, said Duane Short, an ecologist with the Laramie-based Biodiversity Conservation Alliance.

Logging hasn’t stopped the spread of beetles, he said, and clearing dead timber hurts the long-term health of the forest.

“If you’re familiar with the curriculum of Forest Service schools, it’s about logging, and it’s about ways to log,” Short said. “It’s not about the natural ecology of forests. And so the folks that end up in these fields, they look for reasons to log, essentially.”

Forest officials dispute Short’s assertions.

“If we sat on our hands and did nothing, I think we’ll see some down the road, especially when we get downfall, we’ll see some large fires that are stand- or species-altering fires,” said Wyoming State Forester Bill Crapser. “I also think we’ll see a less healthy forest in the interface.”

I sincerely hope Short’s comments about forestry education were taken out of context.. Anyway, what if we all agreed to take up the topic of the “fuels treatment in the backcountry” sometime later (when we are done with WUI, powerlines and roads) and just focus for the moment on moving forward on what we all agree on?

The Fuel Treatment Debate Continues..Four Mile Fire

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Just returned from vacation and saw this article in the Washington Post.

U.S. Sen. Mark Udall, a resident of Boulder County and a long time supporter of mitigation efforts, has called for a review into whether those efforts were effective, as well as whether firefighters had enough air support and other resources…

Forest managers have begun examining the charred forest to see how their mitigation efforts worked, including how the fire was moving and how it behaved when it hit cleared areas, said Owen.

“All we can do is reduce the risk,” Owen said. “It’s not fireproofing.”

Mitigation efforts in the area had included communities banding together to plan for catastrophic fires, even if it meant convincing neighbors to cut down some of their trees.

Flames got within a half mile of the Poorman neighborhood on the eastern end of the fire, where about 30 homeowners had cut down trees and collectively purchased a plot of land for a community park, which served as a staging area for firefighters.

“These huge conflagrations aren’t as likely as the relatively small ones,” said Vera Evenson, a community leader who has lived in the mountains since 1965. She said the last major fire in the area happened in 1989. “That’s how we know mitigation works.”

Over the past three years, the county and state has spent about $800,000 on fire mitigation in the area, with thousands more spent by local fire districts and homeowners. Federal figures for the area weren’t immediately available, though Udall spokeswoman Jennifer Talhelm hopes that the review will help answer that question.

I thought it was mildly odd that the article cited a scientific study to determine acres of fuels treated.

Nationwide, the federal government treated 29 million fire-prone acres between 2001 and 2008, according to a study led by the University of Colorado at Boulder.

Hopefully, we would have a more direct and less costly method of reporting acres accomplished to Congress than funding university research on accomplishments ;).